It’s the final day of the year! Can you believe it? As we reflect back on 2024, here are a few highlights in the Germanology Unlocked Community. Read on for our top events of the year, links to popular genealogy articles, links to watch free webinars, and more. Thank you for a great year!
January:
1. Finding Your Roots on TV!
I’ve been lucky enough to translate for the PBS television show Finding Your Roots for 8 years now (see Behind the Scenes of Finding Your Roots to get the inside scoop). While I did the translations for guest celebrities Lena Dunham and Iliza Shlesinger in 2023, the episodes my work was featured in aired at the beginning of 2024. It’s always so exciting for me to watch the show and then see my name on TV! Did you get a chance to watch?
2. Brand-New Handwriting Immersion Workshop
I actually had the chance to go to Hawaii for the very first time at the beginning of 2024, so our year got started a bit late! But on January 23, we started off the year strong with our first-ever German Handwriting Immersion Workshop. We had a wonderful group of excited genealogists, who, after our 8-week-program, were going strong deciphering their own records. So proud of them! If you want to join us in 2025, click here!
3. January Course Challenge
In January, we challenged our students of Reading the Old German Handwriting + German for Genealogists to see how far they could get in their courses! Most people love that you get life-time access to these courses, but sometimes that makes it hard to actually sit down and complete them. So in January, the race was on! Who could complete the most sections in 30 days? Congrats again to our winners Kathleen Murray, Regina Yuill, Martin Reber, Melanie Matway, and Sally MacGowan – they were the first place finishers!
February:
4. RootsTech Genealogy Conference, Salt Lake City
I LOVE Rootstech! At the biggest genealogy event of the year, beginning to advanced genealogists come together to connect, learn, and celebrate all things family history. After being apart several years during COVID, I appreciate coming together and getting to catch up with all of you even more. It’s always so fun to hear about all your genealogy success stories! Will you be at RootsTech in 2025? Hope to see you there!
April:
5. Beyond FamilySearch and Ancestry Webinar – Record-Breaking Webinar Attendance
We hit an all-time high for webinar attendees at April’s free webinar – Locating German Records: Beyond FamilySearch and Ancestry. With almost 3,000 attendees, it was our most popular webinar to date! Did you miss it? You can still watch it on-demand here!
May:
6. Seeing Church Records in Person for the First Time in Austria!
With my husband being from Austria, we try to go there at least once a year to visit his family. And when we went in May, I had one goal – to visit his village church and see his family’s church records! I work with my client’s online church records every week, but I had never actually seen the books in person, so I was very excited to get the chance to do so. And it was an amazing experience. See Pages of the Past: My First Time Seeing Church Books in Person for the entire story, as well as some tips for what to do if you are heading to Europe to view your ancestors’ records.
June:
7. Three-Day Webinar Extravaganza: German Names 101
In June, for the first time ever, we offered the same webinar three days in a row – to give as many people as possible the chance to see it. And it was AMAZING! We had around 1,000 people there LIVE every single day, and just had a wonderful time learning together. While we don’t have that exact recording up, you can view a very similar on-demand webinar here: All You Need to Know About German Names.
AUGUST:
8. Meeting Iliza Shlesinger
As a translator, I don’t chat with Hollywood types too often. Or actually ever. But when I heard that comedian Iliza Shlesinger – for whom I had done German translations of her ancestors’ records on the PBS genealogy series Finding Your Roots in January – was coming to my town for a comedy show, I thought to myself, “How amazing would that be if I could actually meet her?” It seemed like a pipe dream, but I thought….well, it’s worth a try. Read the story of how I pushed through nerves and actually made the call to get to meet Iliza here: I Met Iliza Shlesinger: Finding Your Roots Meets Beverly Hills.
9. FEEFHS Genealogy Conference in Salt Lake City
Whenever I go to genealogy conferences, I usually am speaking and running my booth – which I love, but that means I rarely get to attend any sessions on genealogy. So when I heard that the Foundation for East European Family History Studies Conference was taking place in Salt Lake City – only a 1.5 hour flight from where I live – I decided to attend and give myself an educational experience!
And it was great! I loved going to the various German sessions, learning new things and getting to connect with old and new friends. Check out the top genealogy tips I learned here: 7 German Genealogy Tips I Learned the FEEFHS conference! I can’t wait to go back again.
10. Back-to-School Genealogy Extravaganza
What a fun week! To celebrate Back-to-School season, we hosted a week-long workshop of German genealogy topics – a different topic every day! It was so fun meeting up Monday-Friday with a great group of motivated genealogists, and seeing how excited they were to learn to do their family history! Can’t wait to do it again in 2025!
September:
11. Indiana Speaking Event – Willard Public Library
I love getting to travel and speak for different societies, and being part of the Genealogy Quest at Willard Public Library in Evansville, Indiana was no different! I was amazed that some genealogists drove 7 hours to get there for the event – such motivation and dedication to family history. I felt so honored!
October: German-Heritage Month
12. From Germany to America: How German Emigration Impacts Your Genealogy: More Record-Breaking Attendance!
This proved to be our most popular webinar yet! With well over 3,000 registrants, we had a wonderful time kicking off German-Heritage month with a webinar all about German emigration. I love how excited you all are to learn – it makes planning these events so much fun!
See the entire letter from 1853 here: From Germany to America: An 1853 Journey.
December:
13. Final Webinar of the Year: 7 Proven Steps to Uncover Your German Roots
We Germanologists finished off the year strong with one final webinar in December – 7 Proven Steps to Uncover Your German Roots! We talked about finding your ancestor’s German town of origin by looking for sources in your home country first (see: Five Places to Find Your German Ancestor in America and German Immigrants in American Church Records for more help), as well as what to do once you cross the pond and are looking in Europe. The webinar was packed with people from all over the world – from almost every American state to Australia to England to Taiwan – and we had such a fun time sharing our love for German genealogy with one another!
Additional Highlights of the Year:
In 2024, our team also completed hundreds of translation projects, including diaries, letters, church records, vital records, military records, postcards, photograph descriptions, family bibles, emigration records, newspaper entries, and more. Our most exciting translation was perhaps one short word, solving a hotly-debated Mystery at the Symphony, and my very favorite translation was a 1921-1924 baby book, documenting almost every day of babies Peter, Karl, and Barbara’s young lives exactly one hundred years ago (blog post on that to come soon!). We also had a valued client, Rebecca, tell us she was able to locate her ancestor’s painting in a German castle as a result of translations we completed – so that was exciting!
Each and every translation project this year was special to us, and we are so grateful to work on each and every one of your documents – playing just a small part in your family history journey means so much to us, and influences us more than you know (just ask my husband- he says I live in the past).
This year, our Germanology newsletter list also grew from 16,000 to 22,000, and we are so happy to have all you new subscribers with us! And so grateful to those of you who have been with us since day one! Our two books The Magic of German Church Records and Tips and Tricks of Deciphering German Handwriting continued to be mailed out all over the United States (for those of you in other countries, they are on most Amazon sites) and we were also extremely excited to welcome hundreds of new students in our signature self-paced online courses, Reading the Old German Handwriting and German for Genealogists.
You all are avid readers of genealogy articles, and our top 3 blog posts of the year were:
- Translating German Baptismal Records: A Step-by-Step Guide
- 9 Books on German History for Genealogists
- The Genealogy Resource You May Be Missing: The St. Louis County Library
All in all, it was an amazing year full of connection with you Germanologists, and we are so grateful to have you in our lives. Thank you, thank you, thank you for allowing me to do a job I love – I could not do it without all of you! Now on to 2025!